Greetings from the 83rd FIDE Congress and Olympiad in Istanbul. Istanbul is the largest city in Turkey with a population of over 13 million making it one of the largest metropolitan areas in Europe. You may also know this city from your history lessons as Byzantium or Constantinople. Because Istanbul is historically a geopolitically important region there is much to see here if you have time for sightseeing, exploring or tours.

As reported by Franc Guadalupe, our delegation together with Mr. Siegel from Switzerland met with the FIDE President Ilyumzhinov and his deputies and had productive discussions. We look forward to more successful meetings in the future and hope to host such a meeting in the US next year.

I have not yet had time for any sightseeing, and have been busy since my arrival with important business of the USCF to promote our chess interests internationally and also in my capacity as a FIDE Commission Member for the Events Commission and Secretary of the Verification Commission.

As many of you know, FIDE drafted new Statutes well before the Congress and distributed them to member federations and posted the proposals online for comments. Since there were known areas which needed discussion to reach agreement, FIDE held several days of preliminary meetings to work through all of the issues in the drafts and came to agreement on the major points in the proposal to be presented to the Congress. I participated in many of these meetings and am happy to report a positive attitude by all involved. We all worked many hours with the common goal to improve the statutes so that they are clearer, easier to understand and meet the needs of an international sports organization.

I have also had the opportunity to meet my colleagues from other countries in formal and informal settings to discuss our common interests covering such subjects for example, as mentioned above the proposed new statutes, rules and regulations differences between FIDE and USCF, transfer of player to new federation regulations, title applications, FIDE fees for IO’s and IA’s, the expansion of fide ratings to a lower floor and to move to rate rapid chess. We must carefully consider the impact these changes will have on our rating officers and support staff at national federations. It is important that USCF continue to participate in Commissions and develop relationships with representatives of other countries so that we can promote those ideas which we support more effectively through the FIDE Congresses.

The Verification Commission met and we had detailed discussion and answered questions about our report from our Athens meeting held in June. For a look at that report you can go to the FIDE website : Verification Commission Report. I am also a member of the Events Commission and attended the Commission meeting where the agenda items were reviewed and discussed. There was discussion that the regulations pertaining to FIDE transfers between federations would be worked on by Events, and I volunteered to help with that work. You can get more information about the work of the FIDE Events Commission online. I also attended the Women’s Commission. The highlight of the meeting was the presentation of the Caissa Award to reigning Women’s World Champion Grandmaster Hou Yifan.

Our Zonal President Franc Guadalupe represented the US in today's Executive Board meeting and will include a summary in his report after the Continental Americas meeting tomorrow afternoon.